The presently disclosed embodiments relate generally to an apparatus and method for producing documents, and more particularly to a document production system and method incorporating a die exchange system for use with a media cutter.
Conventional systems for producing three-dimensional and non-rectangular two-dimensional documents include a printing system, a cutting system, and in some cases a coating system. Known techniques for cutting print media frequently use a digital cutter or a die cutter. For small cutting jobs having fewer than 100 pieces, the cost per cut unit is high when operating conventional equipment, because either a labor-intensive manual feed unit will be used, or an expensive, complex machine will be employed, resulting in high overhead costs. Furthermore, it is difficult to efficiently process mid-sized cutting jobs of 100-1000 pieces, which may take 5-10 minutes or more to process the media, because the manual die set-up time will add 10-15 minutes to the total time required for each job. It would be useful to develop a system and method for efficiently processing low volume and moderately sized cutting jobs using a die cutter.
Current packaging cut and crease finishers that utilize manual cutting die exchange and setup include buffer systems for incoming jobs, or will stop the digital press until the cutter is ready to receive a job. It would be useful to develop a media cutting system using a die cutter that could match the media throughput rate of an upstream and/or downstream printing and/or finishing operation.